Pat Munts

Squirrels are the clowns of the garden. ... They are also terrorists with tails.

Here are a few reminders to help finish your fall chore list.

A Thanksgiving meal just isn’t complete without the mashed potatoes.

Spokane Community College students Jamie Lucas and Jarred Reitan are part of the greenhouse management class that is raising poinsettias for the annual Poinsettia Open House Thursday and Friday at the SCC Greenery.

None of us expected our fall to end like it did last weekend. In my 40 years here, I can’t remember such an early snow that stuck around as long as this one did.

If you want to see a mesmerizing portrayal of the life and times of America’s first botanist, John Bartram, don’t miss Kirk R. Brown performance of “John Bartram Lives” at the Inland Empire Gardeners monthly meeting this evening at CenterPlace in the Spokane Valley.

October is my favorite month of the year.

Last summer I was lucky. I seemed to have more than a few bumblebees buzzing around my garden.

Sandy Mooney’s riverside garden near Spokane’s Upriver Dam, is the perfect place to soak up the last hurrah of the garden. So much so that she earned the September Garden of the Month prize from the Inland Empire Gardeners.

Row cover is a spun polyester fabric that lets in sun, heat and water and is thick enough to provide some insulation.

With the arrival of cooler weather, many plants will begin to wind down and start to go dormant. There are a few that are only beginning their peak bloom and will give the garden one more last flush of color before the weather gets too cold for anything.

For many of us who were in Spokane during the 1996 ice storm, the destruction was almost unbelievable. Trees coated with ice crashed down on everything and it took weeks to clean up and get the power back on. The one good thing about the experience was the community spirit it built to get the job done. Well, almost. Like most everywhere else, trees crashed down all over Pioneer Park, now Edwidge Woldson Park, on Spokane’s lower South Hill just west of the Stevens Street hill. The trees barely missed the Corbin Art Center. Out of the chaos of broken trees scattered all over the steep hillside emerged the remains of the Moore-Turner gardens, a long-forgotten gem of Spokane’s landscape architectural history. Built first by Frank Rockwood Moore and redesigned by Sen. George Turner, the terraced garden with its arts and craft style of natural basalt stone walls and steps and gardens filled with plants from all over the world drew high praise from many quarters. Unfortunately, the Turner house was torn down in 1940 after Turner’s death, and the gardens slipped back into nature’s grasp.

Finally, we are seeing the end of this crazy summer.

The Inland Empire Gardeners has selected August Garden of the Month at a 1905 vintage house overlooking Monroe Street hill

September is a great time to restore a lawn.

I am hearing rumors that earwigs have invaded gardens in the area. Take a deep breath: They are more of an annoyance than a destructive pest.

Gardens and lawns need careful watering during the hot summer months. Here are some tips on how to ensure plants get enough water to survive the heat.

Since moving into their Painted Hills home in 2009, Carol and Peter McKenny have gone through more than a few deer-munching experiments as they developed their garden. After eight years of experimentation, though, they have created a small but beautiful garden filled with pollinator-friendly perennials, flowering shrubs, conifers and tough native plants. Their efforts won them the July Garden of the Month from the Inland Empire Gardeners.

I have heard from several gardeners in the last couple of weeks that they are harvesting blueberries the size of your thumb. We can thank all the water we got over the winter and spring and the reasonable temperatures in May and June for that success. Blueberries are easy to grow if you meet their requirements of well-drained acidic soil, steady moisture and adequate cold temperatures in the winter to set fruit. The cold temperatures are not a problem for us. In the Inland Northwest, soil pH is often the biggest challenge to growing healthy blueberry plants. They generally prefer a pH of 4.5 to 5.5 but will grow in a soil up to 6.5. Our soils tend more toward a pH of 6.5 and higher.

The Inland Empire Gardeners June Garden of the Month honorees are featured.

We are roaring right through the summer, and it looks like it might be a pretty good tomato year. It’s also time to think about what you can plant when the peas, carrots, spinach, beets and lettuce finish their first go around.

If you still have space in your garden or an empty place on your patio, it’s not too late to plant zucchini.

Cool weather has allowed the soft-bodied sucking insect aphids to thrive and feed on perennials, shrubs and trees.

Like many of us, WSU Master Gardener Mia Marcum-McCoy is always looking for new ways to enjoy her garden and stretch her knowledge. A recent transplant to the South Perry neighborhood from the Seattle area, she has been experimenting with all kinds of what she calls “alternative forms of gardening.” “I took training in permaculture and biodynamics and that got me to think differently about how I can grow food,” Marcum-McCoy said.